There are major downsides for Ecuador if they take Snowden

Miami Herald:

As the exact whereabouts of NSA-leaker Edward Snowden remained a mystery Monday, this small Andean nation said it’s reviewing his asylum plea and suggested it wouldn’t easily cave to U.S. demands that he face espionage charges. But Ecuador could risk its multi-billion dollar trade relationship with the U.S if he lands here, analysts say.
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On Monday, Ecuador Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño confirmed that Snowden had sent an asylum request to President Rafael Correa. Reading from that document at a news conference in Hanoi, Patiño said Snowden feared for his life and believed he couldn’t get a fair trial in the United States.
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Ecuador is studying the asylum request, as well as protests from U.S. authorities, Patiño said. But he didn’t speculate how quickly the government might process the asylum plea.

“It’s another complicated week,” Correa wrote Monday on Twitter. “Rest assured, we will responsibly analyze Snowden’s case and make the most adequate decision based on absolute sovereignty.”

But a diplomatic tug-of-war could have economic consequences in this country of 15 million, which exported more than $9 billion in products to the U.S. last year. About 23 percent of Ecuador’s exports to the United States, including flowers and broccoli, enter the country tax-free under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. But that deal expires at the end of July. And while Ecuador has been trying to find other ways to keep its tax-free status, the Snowden affair casts doubts on its ability to do so.

Ecuador supplies 27 percent of all roses to the U.S., and those exports will be slapped with a 6.8 percent tax hike unless a new deal is reached, said Alejandro Martinez, executive director of the country’s flower-export association.

“Of course this worries us,” he said about the prospect of losing the tax-free status. “That decision would hurt us and the importers in the United States.”

But that could just be the beginning, said Carl Meacham, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Snowden likely had to trade his secrets with the Chinese and the Russians to guarantee his safe passage, Meacham said. And he’ll probably have to do the same in Ecuador.

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“And what if the Ecuadorans start selling those secrets to Venezuela or whomever?” Meacham asked. “These secrets, if shared, are clearly a threat to U.S. national security.”

Under those circumstances, the United States may be forced to “build a sanctions regime,” he said.
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Ecuador has a corrupt government that stifles speech it does not like.  It has been trying to extradite two men   who fled Ecuador to the US.  They are now living in Miami.  Ecuador also gets several million dollars in aid from the US government that they would also likely lose.  The country has seen an influx of US expats who have been buying beachfront property at prices substantially below those in the US and other resort areas.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/24/3467643_p2/where-is-edward-snowden-leak-suspect.html#storylink=cpy

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